***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
With the Senate Republicans’ Tax reform bill making it out of committee on Tuesday, CNN held a previously scheduled debate on tax reform where GOP Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Tim Scott (SC) teamed up to go against Democratic Senators Bernie Sanders (VT) and Maria Cantwell (WA). The matchup promised to make it an interesting discussion, but CNN’s prescreened questions skewed heavily to left. In total, their nine audience questions came from the left at a ratio of 7:2.
CNN’s Jake Tapper kicked off the questioning with a single mother of four who was worried the GOP Tax plan would take away her government benefits. In introducing her Tapper announced:
The first question comes from Sharon Stefan. She’s from Charleston, South Carolina. She makes $23,000 a year. A new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, as you know, says Americans in her salary range could end up getting fewer government benefits under the Senate Republican plan and she has a question for home state senator, Senator Tim Scott.
Dana Bash followed up with a New Jersey resident who claimed to have voted for Cruz in the 2016 GOP primary because he stood for conservative principles. But after parroting Democratic talking points saying the tax reform bill was only cuts for the wealthy and a hike for the middle-class, the man chided Cruz by asking: “Do you believe hiking taxes on the middle-class is in line with conservative principles?”
There was a question to Senator Cantwell that seemed like it was neutral. “Why has there been no apparent effort to sideline the most ideologically ridged of your Senate colleagues and work on a compromised bill that can gain support from both Republicans and Democrats,” a Virginia man asked. But the liberal media really only frame the Republican Party as the one that has a problem with ideologues halting compromise.
...